Our books and films aren’t for everyone. The last thing the world needs is an indie press releasing books that could just as easily carry a corporate colophon. Our work is for the disillusioned and disaffected, the adventurous and independent spirits who thirst for more, who push boundaries and like to witness others test their limits. We know we’re not alone. Let’s make some noise.
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QUICK VIEW 808s & Otherworlds (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays and poems by
Sean Avery Medlin
September 2021!
808s & Otherworlds interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. It's is a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.
Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds — as gut-wrenchingly real as young lovers unmythed by segregation — and imaginative as the story of Mer-Africans as narrated by Storm. Coming Soon!808s & Otherworlds (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays and poems by
Sean Avery Medlin
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"xxxxx"
—xxxxx808s & Otherworlds interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity.
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QUICK VIEW A Door Behind a Door (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Yelena Moskovich
May 2021!
"A hint of Lynch, a touch of Ferrante, the cruel absurdity of Antonin Artaud, the fierce candour of Anaïs Nin, the stylish languor of a Lana del Rey song...” —The Guardian on Virtuoso
From visionary author, Yelena Moskovich, A Door Behind A Door follows Olga as she puzzles her way in search of her missing brother, tangling with an underground Midwestern Russian mafia in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings. Coming Soon!A Door Behind a Door (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Yelena Moskovich
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"A hint of Lynch, a touch of Ferrante, the cruel absurdity of Antonin Artaud, the fierce candour of Anaïs Nin, the stylish languor of a Lana del Rey song."
—The Guardian on VirtuosoIn Yelena Moskovich's spellbinding new novel, A Door Behind A Door, we meet Olga, who immigrates as part of the Soviet diaspora of ’91 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There she grows up and meets a girl and falls in love, beginning to believe that she can settle down. But a phone call from a bad man from her past brings to life a haunted childhood in an apartment building in the Soviet Union: an unexplained murder in her block, a supernatural stray dog, and the mystery of her beloved brother Moshe, who lost an eye and later vanished. We get pulled into Olga’s past as she puzzles her way through an underground Midwestern Russian mafia, in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings.
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QUICK VIEW A History of My Brief Body
a collection of essays by
Billy-Ray Belcourt
A Best Book of 2020
"[Belcourt] ably balances poetic, philosophical, and political insights throughout this unique book... An urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred
For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.
A History of My Brief Body
a collection of essays by
Billy-Ray Belcourt
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99* A Best Book of 2020 —Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy.
"In sharp pieces infused with a yearning for decolonized love and freedom, Belcourt, of the Driftpile Cree Nation, ably balances poetic, philosophical, and political insights throughout this unique book... An urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewThe youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.
For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.
Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray’s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place.
Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.
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QUICK VIEW Alligator and Other Stories
a story collection by
Dima Alzayat
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection, longlist
"The richly detailed short fictions in this debut from a Damascus-born scribe form an intricate, breathtaking mosaic of modern Muslim life."
—Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine
Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent. Alligator and Other Stories
a story collection by
Dima Alzayat
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"Alzayat’s slim, powerful debut collection showcases the author’s deep empathy and imagination in stories about grief, assimilation, and trauma... This intelligent collection is a force to be reckoned with."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review*2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection, longlist.
"A stellar debut... Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present." —Colin Groundwater, GQ
"The richly detailed short fictions in this debut from a Damascus-born scribe form an intricate, breathtaking mosaic of modern Muslim life." —Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine
The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat’s collection are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman performing burial rites for her brother in “Ghusl,” or a great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in “Once We Were Syrians.”
Alzayat’s stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.
The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.
Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent. -
QUICK VIEW Born Into This (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of stories by
Adam Thompson
July 2021!
“A compelling new voice, tough yet tender, from the heart of Aboriginal Tasmania.”
—Melissa Lucashenko, author of Too Much Lip
With humor, pathos, and the occasional sly twist, Thompson’s characters confront discrimination, untimely funerals, classroom politics, the ongoing legacy of cultural destruction, and — overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both black and white Australia — the inexorable disappearance of the remnant natural world. Coming Soon!Born Into This (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of stories by
Adam Thompson
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"xxxxx"
—xxxxxFrom an Aboriginal ranger trying to instill some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions, Adam Thompson presents a powerful indictment of colonialism and racism.
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QUICK VIEW Night Rooms (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays by
Gina Nutt
March 2021!
"[Nutt] spins a striking tale of survival and loss in this haunting essay collection. Nutt uses familiar tropes from horror films as a window into her thinking... Lovers of the personal essay will be thrilled by this innovative collection."
—Publishers Weekly
Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.
Night Rooms (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays by
Gina Nutt
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.
Whether competing in shopping mall beauty pageants, reflecting on childhood monsters and ballet lessons, or recounting dark cultural ephemera while facing grief and authenticity in the digital age, Gina Nutt’s shifting style echoes the sub-genres that Night Rooms highlights—spirit-haunted slow burns, possession tales, slashers, and revenge films with a feminist bent.
Refracting life through the lens of horror films, Night Rooms masterfully leaps between reality and movies, past and present—because the “final girl’s” story is ultimately a survival story told another way. -
QUICK VIEW The Hare (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Melanie Finn
January 2021!
"Daring and unputdownable, The Hare is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2021."
—Jenny Hollander, Marie Claire
The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, her resilience and personal transformation, of her life under the male gaze, and serves as a striking statement about what it means to be a woman in the world.
The Hare (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Melanie Finn
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"Daring and unputdownable, The Hare is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2021."
—Jenny Hollander, Marie Claire"With The Hare, Melanie Finn has written a powerful story of female perseverance, strength, and resilience. This book has rare qualities: beautiful writing while being absolutely unputdownable, and I will be pressing it into the hands of every reader I know." —Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange, Our Endless Numbered Days, and Swimming Lessons
"This is a page-turner about a tough woman and her con-artist lout of a partner, and I will eat my laptop if it doesn’t get optioned for TV or film the minute it hits bookshelves. It is also woven through with ideas about feminism, parenting, narcissism, and self-sufficiency—a book that is easy to read without being remotely lightweight." —Molly Young, Vulture
The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, her resilience and personal transformation, of her life under the male gaze, and serves as a striking statement about what it means to be a woman in the world.
Raised by a stern grandmother to be obedient and obliging in an unremarkable blue-collar town in Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum she meets a worldly man twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England society. Bennett is dashing, knows that “boats” refer to yachts (though you never use the word “yacht”), teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells stories of “Hemingway moments,” of escapades with Truman Capote and Hunter Thompson in exotic locales. Soon, Rosie is living in a boathouse with Bennett on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, and a daughter — Miranda — is born, just as Bennett’s current con goes awry and forces them to abscond in the middle of the night to the untamed wilderness of Northern Vermont.
Almost immediately, Rosie and Miranda are left at an uninsulated cabin without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so Bennett can tend to a teaching job that may or may not exist at a local university. Rosie is forced to survive on her own, to care for her young daughter, to learn how to stack firewood, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in the forest. As Rosie and Miranda’s life gradually begins to normalize, Bennett and his cons catch up to him, and Rosie is forced to ultimately confront Bennett’s simmering obsession and malevolence.
The Hare is an astounding new literary thriller from a celebrated author at the height of her storytelling powers.
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QUICK VIEW They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
a collection of essays by
Hanif Abdurraqib
A Best Book of 2017
"Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him."
—Greil Marcus, Village Voice
In this collection of essays, Hanif Abdurraqib, acclaimed poet and cultural critic, grapples with a storm cloud of confounding emotions with prose that is immediate, personal, poetic, sometimes funny and always deeply touching. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
a collection of essays by
Hanif Abdurraqib
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 10.99*Best Books of 2017 —NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily
*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
*Midwest Indie BestsellerIn an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.